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The purpose of this paper is to present a sophisticated methodology for inkjet printing of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) in the range of 80-200 nm on different flexible substrate. AgNPs was chemically deposited by ejection of silver nitrate and ascorbic acid solutions onto different substrates such as paper and textile fabrics. The fabricated pattern was used to employ as electrode for electrochemical sensors.

The morphology of deposited AgNPs was characterized by means of scanning electron microscopy. Moreover, conductivity and electrochemical behavior were identified, respectively, using four probe and cyclic voltammetry techniques. Acquired image shows a well-defined shape and size for the deposited AgNP.

The conductivity of the paper substrate after printing process reached 5.54 × 105 S/m. This printed electrode shows a sharp electrochemical response for early determination of glucose. The proposed electrode provides a new alternative to develop electrochemical sensors using AgNPs chemically deposited on paper and textile fabric surfaces.

Electricity consumption around the world and in India is continuously increasing over the years. Presently, there is a huge diversity in electricity tariffs across states in India. This paper aims to focus on development of new tariff design method using K-means clustering and gap statistic.

Numbers of tariff plans are selected using gap-statistic for K-means clustering and regression analysis is used to deduce new tariffs from existing tariffs. The study has been carried on nearly 27,000 residential consumers from Sangli city, Maharashtra State, India.

These tariff plans are proposed with two objectives: first, possibility to shift consumer’s from existing to lower tariff plan for saving electricity and, second, to increase revenue by increasing tariff charges using Pay-by-Use policy.

The study can be performed on hourly or daily data using automatic meter reading and to introduce Time of Use or demand based tariff.

The proposed study focuses on use of data mining techniques for tariff planning based on consumer’s electricity usage pattern. It will be helpful to detect abnormalities in consumption pattern as well as forecasting electricity usage.

Consumers will be able to decide own monthly electricity consumption and related tariff leading to electricity savings, as well as high electricity consumption consumers have to pay more tariff charges for extra electricity usage.

To remove the disparity in various tariff plans across states and country, proposed method will help to provide a platform for designing uniform tariff for entire country based on consumer’s electricity consumption data.

This review paper aims to introduce the inkjet printing as a tool for fabrication of flexible/wearable sensors. It summarizes inkjet printing techniques including various modes of operation, commonly used substrates and inks, commercially available inkjet printers and variables affecting the printing process. More focus is on the drop-on-demand printing mode, a strongly considered printing technique for patterning conductive lines on flexible and stretchable substrates. As inkjet-printed patterns are influenced by various variables related to its conductivity, resistivity, durability and dimensions of printed patterns, the main printing parameters (e.g. printing multilayers, inks sintering, surface treatment, cartridge specifications and printing process parameters) are reported. The embedded approaches of adding electronic components (e.g. surface-mounted and optoelectronic devices) to the stretchable circuit are also included.

In this paper, inkjet printing techniques for fabrication of flexible/stretchable circuits will be reviewed. Specifically, the various modes of operation, commonly used substrates and inks and variables affecting the printing process will be presented. Next, examples of inkjet-printed electronic devices will be demonstrated. These devices will be compared to their rigid counterpart in terms of ease of implementation and electrical behavior for wearable sensor applications. Finally, a summary of key findings and future research opportunities will be presented.

In conclusion, it is evident that the technology of inkjet printing is becoming a competitor to traditional lithography fabrication techniques, as it has the advantage of being low cost and less complex. In particular, this technique has demonstrated great capabilities in the area of flexible/stretchable electronics and sensors. Various inkjet printing methods have been presented with emphasis on their principle of operation and their commercial availability. In addition, the components of a general inkjet printing process have been discussed in details. Several factors affect the resulting printed patterns in terms of conductivity, resistivity, durability and geometry.

The paper focuses on flexible/stretchable optoelectronic devices which could be implemented in stretchable circuits. Furthermore, the importance and challenges related to printing highly conductive and highly stretchable lines, as well as reliable electronic devices, and interfacing them with external circuitry for power transmission, data acquisition and signal conditioning have been highlighted and discussed. Although several fabrication techniques have been recently developed to allow patterning conductive lines on a rubber substrate, the fabrication of fully stretchable wearable sensors remains limited which needs future research in this area for the advancement of wearable sensors.